We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"Our security improved from being able to put in rules and close off unwanted traffic."
"The most valuable features are simplicity, management, and that it's constantly evolving."
"What's most important is the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Quota."
"Fortigate is very scalable to serve our customers' needs. We have scaled already from fifty to more than a hundred instances of Fortinet FortiGate. Around 20 staff are required for deployment and maintenance, mostly engineers."
"It can expand easily."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiGate is load balancing. It can provide central management and VPNA. Additionally, it has enhanced our security environment."
"Fortinet FortiGate's ease of management is the most valuable feature."
"Netting is one of the best features. We can modify it in different ways. Site-to-site VPN is also an awesome feature of Cisco ASA. The biggest advantage of Cisco products is technical support. They provide the best technical support."
"Valuable features include DMZ segmentation, and IDS and IPS."
"The firewall power that comes with Cisco ASAv is the most valuable asset. They are are very easy to manage."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ASA firewalls. I like to have features like most integrated systems in ACI."
"The best solutions for our company are those we have yet to implement so it will be even better in the future for us than it already is."
"ASA 5505 and ASA 5506 are very powerful tools to use in a business environment, and provide a lot of security."
"The CLI is the most valuable feature. This solution is very flexible and offers different functionality including firewalls and VPN connectivity."
"We can easily track unauthorized users and see where traffic is going."
"The performance has been very good. Overall, the solution is quite stable."
"It does exactly what it says on the tin. It is good for protecting the business from being compromised. Its port protection is very good."
"I have found the stability of this product to be excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly navigation."
"We like their interface very much. It's pretty easy to use."
"It is very stable with no issues. The firewall's been up for the past 35 days non-stop. It's performed great. It has performed as it should perform."
"The most valuable features are unified threat management which provides security intelligence and the VPN for both site-to-site and remote access."
"SonicWall TZ think it's a good, solid, and stable product."
"In the balance between links feature normally you can just choose one option to balance. It would be better for the solution to have more than one option, preferably three."
"The solution could have licensing fees reduced in the future."
"The integration with third-party tools may be something that they should work on."
"The cloud management and automation capability could be improved."
"A sandbox would be good in order to be able to inspect the emails containing spam and be able to validate the emails that contain malware, prior to delivering to the customer."
"I would suggest that Fortinet add sandboxing to their solution."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"Scalability is one of the disadvantages. When it comes to scalability, you have to actually change the box. If you want to upgrade it, you need to actually change the existing box and probably you take the system off to other sites."
"The software was very buggy, to the point it had to be removed."
"One of the problems that we have had is the solution requires Java to work. This has caused some problems with the application visibility and control. When the Java works, it is good, but Java wasn't a good choice. I don't like the Java implementation. It can be difficult to work with sometimes."
"Sometimes, it is not easy to troubleshoot. You need to know where to go. It took me quite awhile. It's like, "Okay, if it doesn't go smoothly here, then go find the documentation." Once you do it, it is not so bad. However, it is sometimes a steep learning curve on the troubleshooting part of it."
"I would like to see improvement when you create policies on Snort 3 IPS on Cisco Firepower. On Snort 2, it was more like a UI page where you had some multiple choices where you could tweak your config. On Snort 3, the idea is more to build some rules on the text file or JSON file, then push it. So, I would like to see a lot of improvements here."
"I would like to see an IE version of the solution where it is ruggedized."
"Tech support could not answer all of our questions. I had to do research on the web to solve my issues."
"HTTPs inspection and higher throughput/spec would be good."
"MSSP oriented interface: I would like a single console which would allow me to manage settings creating consistency across all customers."
"If the operation increases and the bandwidth consumption increases, it does not perform as per the expectations."
"The dashboard needs to be improved."
"It could be made more user friendly."
"We have been facing issues with reporting."
"The price could be better for us in Bolivia."
"SonicWall TZ can improve the UI application and when you create any net policies or any new policy, it will not sync or work properly."
"The log sections could be done more clearly."
"Its reporting can be improved. Currently, we cannot directly get the user names. It only shows the IP, which makes it a bit confusing because we need to use the IP to find the user. If we could directly get the name of the user, it would be better."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 404 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 12th in Firewalls with 78 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Highlights and helps us catch Zero-day vulnerabilities traveling across our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Has efficient user access control feature and good technical support services ". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
